Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

Bradshaw nudged him to be quiet.

They left two hours later, slightly full of drink and very full of Battenberg. I noticed that the tall one in the black cloak had rifled though my address book before he left and when I looked he had left it open at Handley's address. I returned to the living room and sat on the sofa until sleep overcame me.

I was woken by Pickwick wanting to be let out, and Alan wanting to be let in. The smaller dodo had some paint spilled on him, smelt of perfume, had a blue ribbon tied around his left foot and was holding a mackerel in his beak. I have no idea to this day what he'd been getting up to. I went upstairs, checked that Friday was sleeping in his cot, then had a long shower and a shave.

41

Death Becomes Her

SUPERHOOP ASSAILANT 'VANISHES'

The mysterious assassin who shot the Mallets' team manager has not yet been found, despite a vigorous SpecOps search. 'Its still early days in the investigation,' said a police spokesman, 'but from clothes left at the crime scene we are interested in interviewing a Mr Norman Johnson, who we understand has been staying at the Finis Hotel for the past week.' Asked to comment further on the rumoured link between the attack on Miss Next and a grand piano incident last Friday, the same police spokesman confirmed that the attacks were connected, but wouldn't be pressed on details, Miss Next is still in St Septyks Hospital where her condition is reported as 'critical.'

Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, 24 July 1988

'Table seventeen?'

'Sorry?'

'Table seventeen. You are table seventeen, I take it?'

I looked up at the waitress in a confused manner. A second ago I had been taking a penalty during a Superhoop — and now I was in a cafeteria somewhere. She was a kindly woman with a friendly manner. I looked at the table marker. I was table seventeen.

'Yes?'

'You're to go ... northside.'

I must have looked confused because she repeated it and then gave me directions: along the concourse, past the Coriolanus Will-Speak machine, up the stairs and across the pedestrian walkway.

I thanked her and got up. I was still dressed in my croquet gear

but without mallet or helmet, and I touched my head gently where I could feel a small hole. I stopped for a moment and looked around. I had been here before, and recently. I was in a motorway services. The same one that I had visited with Spike. But where was Spike? And why couldn't I remember how I got here?

'Well, looky what we have here!' came a voice from behind me. It was Chesney, this time wearing some sort of neck brace but with a bruise on the side of his head where I had kicked him. Next to him was one of his henchmen, who was minus an arm.

'Chesney,' I muttered, looking around for a weapon, 'still in the soul reclamation business?'

'And how!'

'Touch me and I'll knock your block off

'Ooooh!' said Chesney. 'Don't flatter yourself, girlie - you've just been called to go northside, haven't you?'

'So?'

'Well, there's only one reason you go over there,' replied Chesney's sidekick with an unkindly laugh.

'You mean—?'

'Right,' said Chesney with a grin, 'you're dead.'

'Dead?'

'Dead. Join the club, sweetheart.'

'How can I be dead?'

'Remember the assassin at the Superhoop?'